Vaughan: Send the next bad boy home

FORMER England captain Michael Vaughan has called for the next player to step out of line on the Ashes tour to be sent home. His demand followed the fine and ban meted out to England Lions player Ben Duckett for pouring a drink over James Anderson at the same Perth nightspot where Jonny Bairstow ‘head-butted’ Cameron Bancroft earlier in the tour. Vaughan, in Australia as a BT Sport commentator, said: ‘I think the actual punishment has to be a little bit stronger. I think every single England cricketer needs to be sat in a room and told, “Do what you want but if you bring any bad PR on the team — and surveillance will be on you, so any small incident will be a big incident — you just get sent home”. ‘That’s the stage it’s got to, a stage I wouldn’t want the team to get into but I actually hope the team are quite embarrassed about what’s being written about them. ‘Ben Duckett’s a young kid but I would question the senior boys who were in that bar that night. They are the role models of the team those young players should be looking up to. ‘And yes, they need to release a bit of the pressure they’ve been under, but with what’s gone on you have to question what the hell they are doing out at a bar at that time of night? ‘There’s a team room, there are plenty of places where you can have a drink and a laugh but to go on show . . . it’s the ultimate crime to go back to the place where the last crime took place just a couple of weeks before. ‘You’ve got to question why the security even allowed the players to go back to that venue. ‘The way I look at it, they’re not respecting themselves. That would hurt more than bringing a bad name on the team. ‘The majority of this England side are very, very professional. They train as well as I’ve ever seen an England team. They’ve been round the blocks many years. But you have one or two bad eggs in your group who, let’s be honest, act like students when they go out.’ Speaking ahead of the third Test which starts on Thursday in Perth — and that England cannot lose if they are to retain the Ashes — Bairstow conceded that the tourists have let both captain Joe Root and the British public down. Asked about Root, he said: ‘I think everyone realises that is something we have done. ‘If we don’t play cricket well then we lose our jobs. That is part and parcel of it and we need to rebuild the trust we had built over the last few years as a team. That starts on Thursday morning. You rebuild it by winning games of cricket.’ England may not be able to separate their off-field travails from their on-field ones, however, with Australia wicketkeeper Tim Paine promising of the Duckett incident: ‘I’m sure someone will bring it up at some stage.’